ON FORM?

By GEOFFREY WANSELL

Last updated at 14:51 22 October 2007

WHAT'S THE PLOT?

As part of a routine intelligence operation at Heathrow airport, Sean Dillon, the former IRA man turned undercover agent for the British secret service — and member of what's known as 'the Prime Minister's private army', led by General Charles Ferguson — stops a Bedouin Arab called Caspar Rashid on suspicion of links with Al-Qaeda.

All is not as it seems, however, for Rashid is no terrorist, rather the reverse. His 13-yearold daughter has been kidnapped by his own father and spirited away to Iraq for an arranged marriage to one of the Middle East's most shadowy and feared terrorists, known only as the Hammer of God.

Under Ferguson's command, Dillon launches a rescue mission for the girl, only to incur the abiding wrath of the man who was to become her husband and his fanatical employers, the Army of God (not to mention the Russian secret service, which has old scores to settle with this private army at the heart of Britain's covert operations).

Determined to reclaim his bride-to-be — and destroy Dillon in the process — the Hammer of God sets out for England, hell-bent on revenge.

MORE OF THE SAME?

Now 78, Newcastle-upon-Tyne born former teacher Harry Patterson has been writing novels under a string of pseudonyms since 1959, but it was his thriller about a wartime plot to assassinate Churchill, The Eagle Has Landed — written as Jack Higgins in 1975 — that made his worldwide reputation. His books have sold more than 250 million copies and been translated into 55 languages.

Prodigiously hard-working, this is his 65th novel and the 14th in a series, featuring the ruthless Dillon, which began in 1992 with The Eye Of The Storm, a fictionalised re-telling of the unsuccessful mortar attack on John Major in 10 Downing Street. Dillon has matured into one of Higgins's finest hardboiled protagonists.

HIGHS AND LOWS?

Dillon remains as cynical, dangerous and ferocious as he always was, but with a trace of Irish philosophy and wry humour that made him one of the most interesting actionheroes of the 1990s. As he puts it dryly in this novel: 'In the world of tomorrow that's emerged in the past few years, we fight fire with fire or go under.' Once again in full action mode, in a string of glamorous and unlikely locales — most notably the deserts of the Middle East — the plot is traditional Higgins/Dillon, complete with a vicious villain, steadfast British intelligence officers and an East End side-kick. The only flaw is that sometimes the action is so breathless, with the characters appearing so quickly, that it can take a little time to catch up.

WHAT'S THE VERDICT?

If it's not quite vintage Higgins — the Jersey based author is showing signs of tiring — the remarkable enthusiasm remains, as does the author's grasp of the technical detail of intelligence operations and his firmly-held belief that good always conquers evil. In the murky world of counterterrorism that's a cheering thought — although I suspect it may not always be true.